Mystery is in Herculeah Jones’s blood. How could it not be, with a father on the police force and a mother who’s a private eye? So when Herculeah notices a man hanging around the "Dead Oaks" mansion, she can’t resist doing some investigating of her own. Legend has it the old estate was the site of a murder, and now it looks like there’s something even more nefarious going on. Can Herculeah crack the case before the mystery man closes in on her?

Knowing that he must satisfy their curiosity, an old mouse agrees to show three young mice the "monster" at the top of the stairs.

THE STORY: The setting is a small Oklahoma town in the early 1920s and the home of the Flood family. Here we find Rubin, a traveling salesman for a harness firm, Cora, his sensitive and lovely wife, Sonny, their little boy and Reenie, their teenage daught

Mystery is in Herculeah Jones’s blood. How could it not be, with a father on the police force and a mother who’s a private eye? So when Herculeah notices a man hanging around the "Dead Oaks" mansion, she can’t resist doing some investigating of her own. Legend has it the old estate was the site of a murder, and now it looks like there’s something even more nefarious going on. Can Herculeah crack the case before the mystery man closes in on her?

In this spine-tingling, atmospheric “nail-biter of a novel” (Shelf Awareness), a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at an alleged haunted house—the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago. Few in sleepy Sumner’s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to trespass. A man had killed his wife and two young daughters there, a shocking, gruesome crime that the sleepy upstate New York town tried to bury. One summer night, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did. Twenty years later, Clare receives word that Abby has attempted suicide at the Octagon House and now lies in a coma. With little to lose, Clare returns to her roots to uncover the darkness responsible for ruining their lives. A “spellbinding horror story, where the terror comes not from ghosts, but from the haunted places we find within ourselves” (Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point), Beneath the Stairs is perfect for fans of Jennifer McMahon, Simone St. James, and Chris Bohjalian.

Following the success of his latest novel, Travis Glasgow and his wife Jodie buy their first house in the seemingly idyllic western Maryland town of Westlake. At first, everything is picture perfect—from the beautiful lake behind the house to the rebirth of the friendship between Travis and his brother, Adam, who lives nearby. Travis also begins to overcome the darkness of his childhood and the guilt he’s harbored since his younger brother’s death—a tragic drowning veiled in mystery that has plagued Travis since he was 13. Soon, though, the new house begins to lose its allure. Strange noises wake Travis at night, and his dreams are plagued by ghosts. Barely glimpsed shapes flit through the darkened hallways, but strangest of all is the bizarre set of wooden stairs that rises cryptically out of the lake behind the house. Travis becomes drawn to the structure, but the more he investigates, the more he uncovers the house’s violent and tragic past, and the more he learns that some secrets cannot be buried forever.